Working with Lab-Aids

Selecting new instructional materials is more than just buying a product, it’s the beginning of a partnership.

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Our Focus is on Science

All we do is science. Lab-Aids has exclusively worked in the field of hands-on, secondary science education for over 50 years.
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Organized Equipment

Unique to Lab-Aids alone, our program equipment is highly organized, is customized for SEPUP, and intentionally minimizes consumable materials.
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Remote Learning

Online student and teacher portals bring an additional layer of support for the core curriculum programs. The online student and teacher books, as well as supplemental links and resources, allow both students and teachers to access them from home.
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Professional Development

Our PD sessions are like our programs: engaging, hands-on, and personally relevant. Teachers’ valuable time is spent with highly trained coaches who are themselves, users of Issues and Science.
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GET TO KNOW LAB-AIDS MIDDLE SCHOOL CURRICULUM

Lab-Aids is the exclusive publisher for SEPUP, an acronym for Science Education for Public Understanding Program, located at the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Lab-Aids partners with SEPUP to publish digital and print materials and produce science lab equipment.

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Issues in Science is a hands-on, middle school science curriculum that prioritizes hands on instruction over screen time. It is developed for the NGSS by SEPUP at the Lawrence Hall of Science, and is published by Lab-Aids.

Instructional design and unique equipment bring out student ideas and learning through personal, concrete experiences while issue-oriented science helps students see how science is connected to their lives and communities.

We believe there is no suitable replacement for hands-on investigation so we’ve created a program that’s organized and manageable for teachers, and engaging and meaningful for students. Take a look through a typical unit here.

View the Puerto Rico | Grades 6-8 Correlations

Learn more about our 6-8 program
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Lab-Aids and SEPUP earn high scores on the EdReports review. 

Issues and Science has earned the second-highest overall scores for middle school science curriculum. EdReports found Issues and Science to fully meet expectations for three-dimensional learning and assessment, to present phenomena and problems as directly as possible, and to use the assessment system to show evidence of increasing student sophistication in the content from grade six to grade eight. Additionally, EdReports’ analysis affirmed that Issues and Science fully meets all grade-band DCIs, and presents content, SEPs, and CCCs in a way that is appropriate and scientifically accurate.

See the full review
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Three-Dimensional

Representing 3-D learning visually

These Learning Pathways are used in unit development by SEPUP, at the Lawrence Hall of Science, in the same way schools are using multi-colored stickies to ensure the three dimensions are authentically intertwined in the activity and unit design. Starting at the bottom and moving up towards the Performance Expectation, specific unit activities are identified at the Disciplinary Core Idea, and connected to the Science and Engineering Practices, Cross-Cutting Concepts, and Common Core standards for Math and ELA. Those in rectangular boxes are the suggested connections identified in the Puerto Rico Academic Standards for Science, while the ovals represent additional connections made within the SEPUP unit. 

View each of the Learning Pathways for each Issues and Science units.

Three-Dimensional assessment

Activities incorporate sequences of formative assessment that build toward three-dimensions and are structured and supported to assist teachers in the instructional process.

Performance Expectations

An activity may be part of several intertwined Learning Pathways. By the time the student reaches the activity incorporating the assessment related to the Performance Expectation, he or she will have interacted with the content, practices, and crosscutting concepts numerous times in their learning journey.

Unit Overviews

For every unit, there are three overviews in a more traditional table format. The SEPUP Overview describes what students do in each activity. The NGSS Overview shows the integration of the three dimensions in each activity.. The Phenomena, Driving Questions, and Storyline Overview describes the conceptual flow (storyline) of the unit, and the anchoring phenomena and issues driving the instructional sequences. 

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Problem-Based

Issues and Science, developed by SEPUP at the Lawrence Hall of Science, uses a socio-science issue at the heart of each unit that creates a storyline for students to follow. Often students are introduced to a character, a problem, or an intriguing phenomena that they all experience together, so that students can all connect to it as they start the unit. 

The issues in SEPUP's Issues and Science provide context for relevant and connected anchoring and investigative phenomena within the unit

Using Issues to Anchor an NGSS Unit

Issues in Science

Each unit's overarching issue provides a common entry point and anchoring storyline for students to ask questions, collect evidence, and construct explanations around relevant phenomena and related problems that connect to the real world.

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Sensemaking

Through the Driving Questions Board, students are first introduced to the unit issue and are given explicit opportunities to explore connections between the issue, the anchoring phenomenon, and experiences in their daily lives. This sets the tone for the entire learning sequence where students’ prior knowledge is revisited and leveraged at meaningful instances that contribute to and develop student sensemaking.

Differentiation

Issues and Science is intentionally designed to provide a platform for each unique voice, culture, and experience. Through driving question boards, class and small group discussions and activities, notebooking, and embedded strategies like KLEWS and Talking Drawings, students are presented with varied opportunities for expression and leadership. 

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Assessment

The SEPUP Assessment System is based on the idea that students benefit from regular opportunities to demonstrate learning through performance in the context of their work at hand.

Each unit includes a variety of assessments embedded within the instruction context to provide consistent, actionable information to the teacher, and students, with minimal impact on instructional time.

Analysis Questions

Near the end of each activity, an Analysis section provides questions assessing student understanding of the activity’s guiding question. Analysis questions typically build in complexity, starting with one-dimensional questions and build to three-dimensional questions, assessing how students incorporate the three dimensions to demonstrate learning.

Teacher Support

To facilitate use of the assessment system, teacher resources provide sample answers and exemplars, three-dimensional color coding, suggested methods for quick formative assessment, unit assessment blueprints to locate assessment for specific PEs, and guidance to aid instructional changes as a result of assessment data.

Connected Assessment

The SEPUP Assessment System is embedded into the activities so students have regular opportunities to demonstrate learning and receive authentic feedback in the context of their work at hand. A group redesigning a structure to prevent erosion, for example, may also be evaluated on their understanding of engineering design.

Lab-Aids supports Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices.

  • Foster Positive Learning Communities:
    • 4-2-1 model supports heterogenous grouping, networking, and collaboration.
    • Activates multiple intelligence through varied activities.
    • Support materials are organized and easily accessed. 

  • Student Centered/ Relevant to Student's Lives:
    • Students generate, investigate, and respond to questions relevant to their lives.
    • Presented in a student-centered storyline, main characters are students and reflect the diversity of society.

  • Engaging, Rigorous and Relevant:
    • Challenges students to think critically and address relevant issues.
    • Issues-based - student explorations build their expertise - they propose solutions supported by data.
    • Their voice is respected and valued, encouraging divergent thinking supported by their evidence and reasoning. 

Teacher Resources

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Valuable for new and experienced teachers

Teacher resources include both what to teach and why it's our approach to teach in that way. Since we are research-based, teacher resources provide meaningful evidence and insights for implementing inquiry in the science classroom. 

These are not "scripted investigations" but rather great scripts ready to be brought to life by the artistry of the teacher - just as an actor or director would a great play. 

WHAT ARE OTHERS SAYING ABOUT ISSUES AND SCIENCE?

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Questions?

Want to see a Lab-Aids specialist get really excited? Ask to see our evidence of Puerto Rico Standards design in our middle and high school programs.

Contact John Allen